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Rather than being a terrorist who plotted the murder of Canadians with his co-accused and an undercover FBI agent, Raed Jaser was trying to con his way into getting money to support his lifelong drug and alcohol addiction, a clinical psychologist testified Monday during Jaser’s sentencing hearing.

Jaser also says he was high on hashish each of the five times he met with the undercover agent, the psychologist’s report states.

A jury found Jaser, 38, guilty of three terrorism-related offences after a six-week trial and ten days of deliberations. His co-accused Chiheb Esseghaier was convicted on five counts including plotting to derail a Via Rail train, killing the passengers on board. The jury remained deadlocked on whether Jaser was part of the train plot.

On Monday, the psychologist who conducted an assessment of Jaser, testified that in his opinion Jaser “does not represent the typical pattern and motivation of someone representing and being involved with radical Islam.” His were “the actions of someone desperate to stay high, who would do anything to stay high,” Dr. Jess Ghannam testified on behalf of the defence.

Ghannam, 58, is a clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. The court heard that he has consulted on rehabilitation and risk assessment in several terrorism cases in the U.S.

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In the report he concludes that Jaser’s “primary motivation in life was to meet people he could obtain funds from for his own personal gain and to support his addiction.”

Though being a con man was Jaser’s defence at trial, this report contains the first mention in court of Jaser’s addiction to substances including marijuana, hashish, alcohol and occasionally methamphetamine.

In another new development, Jaser told Ghannam that he was high during his interactions with the undercover agent which were recorded and played to the jury, forming a key part of the evidence for the Crown.

“The hashish he used was black tar which creates a significant high and at times make it more difficult to cognitively process information,” the report states.

In a short court appearance Friday, Crown prosecutor Croft Michaelson said Jaser’s drug addiction came as a surprise and questioned why no mention of it occurs in surveillance records or lengthy audio recordings taken by the undercover agent.

In addition to speaking with Jaser and conducting two psychological tests, Ghannam spoke with members of Jaser’s family including his parents, wife and brother and reviewed the reams of audio intercepts played to the jury during the trial.

The audio intercepts include Jaser sharing his preferred plan to use a sniper rifle to shoot high-ranking Canadian officials: “I want this city, this whole country, to burn,” Jaser said in one conversation. In another, during a discussion about derailing the train, he said: “I could care less about who dies. Everyone is a target.”

Ghannam was asked by Jaser’s lawyer John Norris how he fit Jaser’s statements into his analysis.

“I took his utterances very seriously, as the jury did,” Ghannam said, adding that he looked at the statements in a broader context that the jury did not have access to. “I concluded what I did, even with that information.”

Ghannam said he determined that Jaser, a permanent resident, poses a “low risk” for future terrorism offences, the lowest possible risk level, and is a good candidate for rehabilitation given the support of his “frankly, wonderful” family, his expression of remorse and no history of violent behaviour.

Ghannam maintained that his conclusion that Jaser never had the intention or motivation to harm or kill anyone does not contradict the jury’s verdict — that Jaser conspired to murder people in for the benefit of a terrorist group.

The report, which provides an in-depth look into Jaser’s background based on his own account and those of his family, shows a man who got involved in partying, sex and drugs in his early teens and became increasingly desperate for money to support his expensive drug habits.

He became engaged in various scams and spiraled further and further into addiction and depression, making a suicide attempt in 2006, the report states.

In 2009, after he and his wife moved into the basement of a Pakistani couple, he began to pose as pious Muslim, hoping to scam the community, while leading a “secret double life” as an addict, the report states. This is how he met Esseghaier and eventually, the undercover FBI agent, the report states.

In a heated exchange, Michaelson suggested that Ghannam suffered from confirmation bias while writing the report and left out important details that didn’t fit with his drug addict hypothesis.

He focused on the doctor’s notes from his interviews with Jaser’s family members which include no explicit mentions of Jaser’s long-term drug addiction. Ghannam said that he did not take exhaustive notes, but did make references to a serious addiction problem through examples such as Jaser stealing from the family piggy bank.

Michaelson also noted that Ghannam was working only with information he was provided by family members and Jaser’s lawyers.

Jaser’s parents told Ghannam they never believed Jaser’s commitment to Islam, and that it was just another phase, leading to his nickname “Ray the Phaser.”

Ghannam agreed with Michaelson’s suggestion that it would have been important to know that Jaser’s father approached a religious advisor on two occasions with concerns about his son having extremist views.

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